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For Immediate Release
February, 10 2025, 04:38pm EDT
Contact:
Natalia Pérez Santos, nperezsantos@afscme.org
AFSCME's Saunders: Workers and Communities Are Paying the Price of the Administration Dismantling Federal Agencies
AFSCME President Lee Saunders released the following statement after AFSCME members at the U.S. Department of Agriculture were placed on administrative leave to be furloughed:
“Federal workers and America’s communities are starting to pay the price of Elon Musk and his cronies’ unlawful efforts to dismantle essential public services. AFSCME members within the Department of Agriculture were notified that they will be furloughed since the administration has illegally eliminated the USAID, which funds the work they do. Because of these extremist actions, not only will people abroad go hungry, but American farmers will be left high and dry with no one to buy their crops. This is only the beginning of billionaires’ campaign to gut public services so they can hand over trillions in tax cuts to their wealthiest friends. It is shameful, and we will consider all our options to stop these actions.”
AFSCME members provide the vital services that make America happen. With members in hundreds of different occupations, AFSCME advocates for fairness in the workplace, excellence in public services and prosperity and opportunity for all working families.
(202) 429-1000LATEST NEWS
UN Commission Accuses Israel of Measures 'Intended to Prevent Births' and Other 'Genocidal Acts' in Gaza
"Nothing to see here, just a 49-page U.N. report documenting Israel's 'genocidal acts' in Gaza and its systematic use of sexual violence as a weapon of war," wrote one historian.
Mar 13, 2025
A report released Wednesday by the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel says that Israel has "systematically" used reproductive, sexual, and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians since October 7, 2023.
Additionally, Israel committed "genocidal acts" when systematically destroying reproductive and healthcare facilities in Gaza, according to the report's authors.
The report was submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Council, which as of February Israel no longer engages with.
"Sexual and reproductive healthcare facilities have been systematically destroyed across Gaza" and Israeli authorities have simultaneously prevented "humanitarian assistance at scale, including necessary medications and equipment to ensure safe pregnancies, deliveries, and neonatal care," according to the report.
"Israeli authorities have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group, including by imposing measures intended to prevent births, one of the categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention," the report states.
The report also says that harms for pregnant people and new mothers in Gaza is of an "unprecedented scale." The lack of access to sexual and reproductive care has caused harm and suffering with "irreversible long-term effects" on the "physical reproductive and fertility prospects of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group."
"The underlying acts amount to crimes against humanity and deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians as a group, one of the categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention," according to the report.
The commission also "documented a pattern of sexual violence, including cases of rape and other forms of sexual violence, torture, and other inhumane acts that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity."
Additionally, Palestinian mens and boys have been subjected to "often sexual" acts committed to "punish, humiliate, and intimidate" them into subjugation, per the report.
"Nothing to see here, just a 49-page U.N. report documenting Israel's 'genocidal acts' in Gaza and its systematic use of sexual violence as a weapon of war," wrote Zachary Foster, a historian who focuses on Palestine, on X on Thursday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the report in a statement.
"Instead of focusing on the crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by the Hamas terrorist organization... the United Nations once again chooses to attack the state of Israel with false accusations," he said, according to Reuters.
In October 2023, Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing over 1,000 people and taking roughly 250 hostages—prompting Israel to carry out a fierce military campaign in the Gaza Strip that killed tens of thousands of people, according to local health officials.
Multiple human rights groups have said Israel is guilt of committing genocide or "acts of genocide."
Israel faces an ongoing genocide case, led by South Africa, at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri in November 2024. Hamas has since confirmed his death.
A shaky cease-fire deal between Hamas and Israel went into effect in mid-January. The New York Timesreported Thursday that Israel-Hamas negotiations to extend the cease-fire are in limbo.
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Judge Blocks Trump Order Enacting 'Personal Vendetta' Against Law Firm
"This cannot be the reality we are living under," said federal Judge Beryl Howell.
Mar 13, 2025
Saying that U.S. President Donald Trump's recent order blocking an international law firm from working with the federal government cast "a chilling harm of blizzard proportions across the legal profession," a federal judge on Wednesday issued a temporary restraining order halting Trump's penalties, which she said were likely retaliatory.
U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell in Washington, D.C. ruled that Trump violated the First Amendment and due process rights of the law firm, Perkins Coie, when he issued an executive order last week saying the federal government was barred from working with the firm or using contractors who work it in most circumstances.
Employees at the firm—including 1,200 lawyers and 2,500 workers who are not involved in Perkins Coie's legal cases—would also be barred from entering federal buildings and their security clearances would be suspended.
Trump said last week that it was "an absolute honor to sign" the order, which targeted a firm that represented Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee in 2016, as well as contracting with a research firm that released the since-discredited Steele dossier. The dossier alleged contacts between Trump and Russia during the 2016 campaign; Marc Elias, the lawyer who was involved in producing the dossier, is no longer at Perkins Coie.
Perkins Coie argued in court that its ability to operate has already been damaged days after Trump signed the order, with its biggest 15 clients being barred from working with its lawyers because they hold government contracts. The clients account for 15% of Perkins Coie's business, and Howell noted in her order that thousands of employees who are not involved in the firm's legal work would be harmed if Trump's order was allowed to move forward.
"This executive order takes a wrecking ball to the rule of law," said Dane Butswinkas, a lawyer with the firm Williams & Connolly, which took Perkins Coie's case. "The effects have been immediate."
In a brief filed in the case, the law firm called Trump's order "an affront to the Constitution."
"Its plain purpose is to bully those who advocate points of view that the president perceives as adverse to the views of his administration," argued the firm. "Because the order in effect adjudicates and punishes alleged misconduct by Perkins Coie, it is an unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers. Because it does so without notice and an opportunity to be heard, and because it punishes the entire firm for the purported misconduct of a handful of lawyers who are not employees of the firm, it is an unconstitutional violation of procedural due process and of the substantive due process right to practice one's professional livelihood."
Howell said Trump's order was borne out of a "personal vendetta" against a firm that has worked with his political opponents and likened his actions to those of the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, who "yells, 'Off with their heads!' at annoying subjects... and announces a sentence before a verdict."
"This cannot be the reality we are living under," said Howell, adding that the order attacking a firm that Trump accused of working against his interests "sends little chills down my spine."
The judge said Trump's "retaliatory animus" against Perkins Coie was made clear by the order and a fact sheet presented by the White House last week, which noted that the firm had "filed lawsuits against the Trump administration."
Howell's restraining order does not apply to the portions of Trump's order which revoked employees' security clearance and addressed the firm's diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. The judge said she will hold an additional hearing to issue a permanent ruling.
The temporary ruling, said legal analyst and former U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance, is "a big win for Perkins Coie, the legal profession, the rule of law, and democracy."
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Trump and GOP Wage War on Children's Food Aid to Fund Tax Cuts for the Rich
The Republican Party's proposed cuts to nutrition assistance for children, said one analyst, "would be part of legislation that would give massive tax cuts to the wealthiest people and businesses."
Mar 13, 2025
The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are waging a multi-front war on nutrition benefits for children, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture moving this week to end programs that provided over $1 billion in funding for schools and charity organizations to buy food from local farmers as GOP lawmakers simultaneously take aim at school meal programs as part of an effort to fund tax breaks for the wealthy.
Schools and farmers are "bracing for impact," as The Washington Postput it, after the USDA axed the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program and the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program as part of a purported effort to "return to long-term, fiscally responsible initiatives."
The Local Food for Schools Program, according to the USDA, "no longer effectuates agency priorities."
The decision to kill the programs could be disastrous for schools, childcare facilities, and other organizations that were expecting federal funding this year. Politicoobserved that "roughly $660 million that schools and childcare facilities were counting on to purchase food from nearby farms" has been terminated by the Trump administration.
"Trump and Elon Musk have declared that feeding children and supporting local farmers are no longer 'priorities,'" Democratic Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said in a statement, noting that her state was set to receive $12.2 million "to provide local healthy food to childcare programs and schools, and to create new procurement relationships with local farmers and small businesses."
"Instead of strengthening our food supply chain and supporting students and food banks, the Trump White House wants cuts, chaos, and cruelty."
Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio), vice ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee, said that "the Trump administration is proving to be bad for farmers, bad for children, and bad for people in need."
Food insecurity rose for the second consecutive year in 2024, and roughly 14 million children in the U.S. are food insecure, according to the nonprofit Feeding America.
"Instead of strengthening our food supply chain and supporting students and food banks, the Trump White House wants cuts, chaos, and cruelty," said Brown. "These two programs were a win-win for farmers and communities, and it is incredibly short-sighted to abruptly end them."
Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, are pushing for deep cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid that "could make it harder for schools to operate meal programs and for families to obtain free or reduced-price school meals, Summer EBT, or benefits through the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)."
That's according to an analysis published Wednesday by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), which noted that "school meal programs and Summer EBT use SNAP and Medicaid data to automatically enroll children."
"If low-income families with children lose their SNAP and/or Medicaid benefits, they would have to complete a school meal application instead of being automatically enrolled," CBPP warned. "In addition to diminished access to meals during the school year, families who are unable to successfully navigate the application process would no longer be automatically enrolled in Summer EBT. Families with children who lose SNAP and/or Medicaid would also lose their adjunctive income eligibility for WIC."
Zoë Neuberger, a senior fellow at CBPP, said that "as families struggle to keep up with the rising cost of food, Republicans in Congress are looking at making it harder for millions of children in families with low incomes to get free meals at school."
"Worse yet, the proposed cuts would be part of legislation that would give massive tax cuts to the wealthiest people and businesses," said Neuberger. "Congress should instead focus on removing red tape for schools and families so parents can afford groceries and children can get the meals they need for healthy development."
The School Nutrition Association (SNA), a national nonprofit whose members help provide meals to schools across the U.S., is sounding the alarm about three specific proposals that Republicans are weighing as they craft their sprawling reconciliation package:
- Restricting the Community Eligibility Provision;
- Requiring income verification with every free and reduced-price school meal application; and
- Ending Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility
"These proposals would cause millions of children to lose access to free school meals at a time when working families are struggling with rising food costs," SNA president Shannon Gleave warned in a statement earlier this week. "Meanwhile, short-staffed school nutrition teams, striving to improve menus and expand scratch-cooking, would be saddled with time-consuming and costly paperwork created by new government inefficiencies."
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